


piecemeal

by kokiri



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Office, M/M, broken soonwoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 13:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7894213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokiri/pseuds/kokiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>adjective. done, made, or accomplished piece by piece or in a fragmentary way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	piecemeal

**Author's Note:**

> i literally worship this ship and would give my life for more fic.

Wonwoo would later recall that everything started with a stupid fender bender just outside of the front gate of his apartment complex when he was already running late for work. He had to turn around and go all the way to the back of the complex, where about ten other people had decided to do the same, and take the long way around to get to work. Because of this, he clocked in at exactly 8:17.

That small seventeen-minute shift was enough to make him feel like his entire day was a little off. He sat down at his desk and attempted to recalibrate the timeline so that he could feel normal. He was not successful, having not quite mastered that skill yet.

He printed off his daily assignments and sent them to the nice, big printer in the supply room at the front of the office, because the printer next to his desk was shitty and had been low on toner for seven months. Fuck yeah, Wonwoo deserved this one today.

But unfortunately for Wonwoo, his much-needed mental respite from the pain of existing in the form of meditating for a few seconds in the supply room alone was tragically ruined by the presence of another human.

This human was chewing on a pen, but in a way that was unnecessary. He looked at Wonwoo. “What,” he said.

“Good morning…” Wonwoo said.

“Morning,” said the human. He had a stack of letters in his hand. The letter machine was making a curiously unhappy sound.

“I think you need to—”

“I  _know_ what I need to do,” said the human. He opened the front of the letter machine where two letters and one envelope had gotten jammed and folded into a complex origami design representing Wonwoo’s current mental state. 

“My name is Wonwoo. By the way. If you were wondering.”

“I was. Hey. Have you ever wondered just how much force it would take to break all of your fingers in the letter machine? Whenever I’m in here I’m always thinking, I really just want to smash my fingers in this machine, because breaking all of my fingers would be the only way to get management to approve the use of any of my sick hours.”  

Wonwoo stared. He blinked. He dropped all of his prints on the ground. “Yes, actually,” he said.  

“Cool. Oh, and my name’s Jeonghan. If you were wondering.”

 

 

 

Wonwoo took lunch at one instead of noon.

Soonyoung was waiting for him eagerly – it was difficult for them to coordinate their schedules most days as Soonyoung was either taking his lunches ridiculously early or hideously late.

“What are you having?” Soonyoung asked, peering over at Wonwoo’s lunchbox. 

“I don’t know. Something that Junhui made.” He opened the container and observed its contents. A meticulously packed bento-style lunch, as lately Junhui had been obsessively watching YouTube videos dedicated to teaching lowly peons the art of the most perfect, aesthetically pleasing meals.

“Cuuute,” Soonyoung sang, picking up a cherry tomato. “But kind of sad that your roommate packs your lunches for you.” He popped the tomato into his mouth.

“Shut up. You’re just jealous that it’s him and not you.”

Soonyoung _hmmm_ ’d around the tomato and gave Wonwoo a puffy-cheeked, eyes-closed smile. 

“Hey, Soonyoungie,” Wonwoo said. He picked up exactly one grain of rice between his fingers, just because. “Do you know Jeonghan?”

“Jeonghan? Yeah. We trained together. I talk to him, like, every day! I mean, as much as he wants to talk. He’s kind of like…” Soonyoung furrowed his brow. “Like that.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said.

“But then other days he’s different.”

“That’s kind of how people are. Not just stuck in one stagnant mood. Experiencing the wide spectrum of human emotion.”

Soonyoung angrily picked up an octopus shaped sausage from Wonwoo’s lunch box and squeezed it until its little sesame seed eyes fell off. “Cut the attitude or this guy fucking gets it, Jeon,” he said. “What I mean is that sometimes he’s at a zero, other days he’s at a ten. Kind of like some days I’m at a five, and other days I’m at an eight, only more extreme.”

“You are so lucky,” Wonwoo said, “that five is a low for you.”

“Sure am,” Soonyoung said. He ripped a tentacle off of the sausage and ate it. “I can’t believe Junhui did this. I can’t believe Junhui did this _for you_.”

“Let me reiterate my original point, that you are so very jealous.”

Soonyoung opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by someone entering the break room. A big smile swept over his face. “Oh, Jeonghan!” he said.

Wonwoo resisted the urge to whip his body around at five million miles per hour. Instead, he coolly turned around and gave Jeonghan a slight nod. Jeonghan responded by looking at Wonwoo like he was a perplexing pile of trash on the ground.  

“Lunch?” Soonyoung asked.

“I’m just filling my water bottle…” Jeonghan said. There was a weird apprehension at the end of every syllable, not so much that he was nervous, but more like he was a bit confused as to why people were attempting to speak to him. He held his water bottle in the cooler, pushed the button, and glanced at Wonwoo over his shoulder. “You two know each other? Oh, wait. Wonwoo’s the one who you—”

“AH!” Soonyoung screamed. “No! What the fuck, Jeonghan, you say weird shit sometimes! Ha!”

“Hmmm, okay,” Jeonghan said. He twisted the lid back on to his water bottle and left without another word, letting the door slam behind him.

“He likes you,” Soonyoung said sincerely.

“What?”

“I said that he likes you. He’s friendly to you.”

“That’s friendly?” Wonwoo asked disbelievingly. Could have fooled him.

“Exceptionally friendly. Hey, we’re all going out for Seulgi’s birthday on Friday. You should come!”

Wonwoo thought about it, but he’d never really liked infringing on the plans Soonyoung always made with his friends over on the other side of the office – they had different work experiences, dealt with different managers, and overall had a different pool of commiseration to draw from. And it was hard to talk to coworkers about things that weren’t work.  

But still. Surely there would be no harm. He could leave whenever he wanted. And Jeonghan –

He gave Soonyoung a sigh of resignation. Fine. He would go.

 

 

 

Wonwoo was growing bored of wasting his precious ten minute breaks sitting in the break room staring at his phone. He decided on this fateful Wednesday that he would take a walk. It was a little chilly outside, being the tail end of winter and all, but not chilly enough to encourage Wonwoo to go back inside. Just one brisk lap around the building wouldn’t hurt.

One thing that Wonwoo had forgotten in the months he had spent using his breaks to do nothing more than mindlessly scroll through Twitter was that a lot of people in the office smoked. A surprising amount. Each and every one of them had their own preferred spot around the sides and back of the building to take a smoke break.

Wonwoo walked down the stairs, grabbed on to the railing towards the bottom and used the momentum to swing himself around the corner, right into a cloud of cigarette smoke, and learned Jeonghan was one of those people. Cigarette between two thin fingers, he tilted his head at Wonwoo but didn’t say anything.

“Hey,” Wonwoo said. 

“Hey…”

“Why do you do that thing?” Wonwoo asked. “Why do you say words like you’re upset that people are expecting you to talk?”

Jeonghan’s eyed widened in slight surprise, and then he smiled. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Is this your usual spot?”

“Well, my usual spot was actually closer to those trashy apartments right across the street. But then Sana started going over there.”

“Sana smokes?”

“Oh. You have no idea. Like a fucking freight train. An unhinged fucking freight train. Anyway, I have to find a new spot – this one is only temporary. It’s not prime real estate as you can tell. At any given moment someone could turn that corner and ruin my vibe.”

Wonwoo wasn’t stupid. He could tell when someone was trying to pin him as a vibe-ruiner. “Smoking is a terrible habit,” he said, just to be snotty.

“Yeah.”

“And it’s ugly. Super ugly.”

“Oh! Okay! You think I care? Who are you again?” Jeonghan took a drag and Wonwoo happily watched the smoke twisting and dancing out from his lips. Pretty.

Wonwoo checked the clock on his phone. He had about seven minutes left of his break. A tense conversation with Jeonghan somehow felt like a better use of his time than a lap around the office.

“So,” he said. “I’m going to Seulgi’s birthday thing.”

“Ahhhh,” Jeonghan said. “Soonyoung invited you. He invited you because I’m going to be there.”

There was no point in pretending like that wasn’t so. Wonwoo shrugged.

“In that case then,” Jeonghan said, dropping his cigarette on the ground and stomping it out. “I’ll see you there, I guess. Buy me a drink?”

“Yeah…” Wonwoo faltered at the thought of an ideal night at the bar with Jeonghan – drinks, feet touching underneath the table, taking a cab back to Wonwoo’s place, and then – he lied that his break was over, turned around and ran back around the corner, up the stairs, and wondered when he was going to find himself on equal footing with Jeonghan – and why the footing was so unequal to begin with.

 

 

 

It didn’t take Wonwoo too long to realize that being at a crowded bar surrounded by people he didn’t really know was not his ideal Friday night. He looked around – there was Seulgi, the birthday girl, throwing back shots like they were nothing. Wonwoo knew Seulgi, liked her even. But what was he supposed to do in this situation? He offered to buy her a drink. Then she started crying and saying that Wonwoo was so nice, and did Wonwoo know that Soonyoung was still in love with him? This made Wonwoo feel terrible, so he immediately crawled back into his mental hole and wanted to die.

Unable to find Soonyoung in the noisy group to verify if he had heard Seulgi’s exceptionally loud comment or not, Wonwoo settled on leaving the bar to curl up alone in one of the puke-stained booths, staring intensely into the now-lukewarm beer in front of him. He suddenly was not in the mood to drink or exist at all. He barely noticed someone sitting down across from him and would have ignored them if he wasn’t such a stickler for etiquette.  He looked up. 

“Oh,” he said.

Jeonghan gave him a smarmy grin, took a shot, and slammed the glass down on the table. “Listen,” he said. “I know all about you. Because last year, Soonyoung was like, literally fucking in love with you and he told me everything. And I always thought to myself, wow, this Wonwoo guy sounds like a remarkable piece of shit! Wanna know why?”

“Sure.”

“Because Soonyoung was always saying, Wonwoo can’t leave well enough alone, Wonwoo doesn’t like me, but he doesn’t want me to be sad. So you two were just f—”

“God, shut up!” Wonwoo said. He let out a loud, drawn out sigh and ran his hands through his hair. “You think I don’t know this or what?”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Jeonghan said. “But there’s nothing wrong with a little reflection, so I was just trying to do you a favor.”

“Hey, you know something? You’re not entitled to this conversation, or to my time. I have known you for, like, two seconds,” Wonwoo said, waving an admonishing finger in Jeonghan’s face. 

Jeonghan grabbed Wonwoo’s finger and shoved his hand away. “You were asking about meee,” he teased. 

Wonwoo sputtered a bunch of nonsense and crossed his arms. Soonyoung was such a punk. “I guess I was!” he admitted, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Maybe ‘cause all I’ve wanted in my life is a person who also wants to crush their own extremities in office equipment? Is that so wrong?”

“No, definitely not,” Jeonghan said. He grabbed Wonwoo’s beer and took a sip. “Gross! Anyway. I’m always thinking, the machine that stamps all of the letters, I’ll bet if I angled my head just right it could literally scalp me.”

“Sometimes I sit at my desk and think about stapling my eyelids shut.” Wonwoo grabbed his beer back from Jeonghan and took a big drink. He was right, it was gross.

“I’ve spent a lot of time wanting to just rip into my hand with my staple remover.”

“The big printer in the supply room could probably come down with enough force to break your entire arm, but you’d need a little bit of help with that one.”

“True, true. If I put my head in the letter machine, and someone slammed the top down over and over, I’ll bet I would die. That’s what I think about the most.”

Wonwoo laughed, and it was this heavy laugh that he had previously been unaware his body was even capable of producing. It felt good. “It’s a small comfort when I’m being metaphorically crushed under the weight of small business induced depression that I could just gut myself with a letter opener for a quick escape.”

Jeonghan smiled – mostly in his eyes, which was sweet in a subdued sort of way, and it made Wonwoo feel something that he intentionally pretended like he didn’t quite understand (flustered, or joyous, or enamored, or whatever – Wonwoo told himself repeatedly that he didn’t know). The smile quickly faded in exchange for a more perturbed, slack-jawed expression. “I feel sick,” he said. “Too many good feelings, you know. My body’s not used to it. Ha.”

“Ohhh no,” Wonwoo said, sliding out of the booth and pulling Jeonghan out by the arm. “Let’s be dignified about this. Come on, I’ll walk you to the bathroom.” They walked together to the bathroom in the back of the bar – one stall and covered in piss – and Jeonghan whined that Wonwoo was annoying and it was really no big deal. That was about five seconds before he kneeled over the toilet and threw up.

“Fuuuck,” he sighed.

“Feel better?” Wonwoo asked, instinctively reaching out to rub his back, but quickly pulling away because maybe that was just a little too intimate.

“How gross is it that you’re literally in here with me while I’m throwing up?” Jeonghan asked. He gagged and his body lurched forward again – false alarm, though. He steadied his breathing with a few deliberate, deep breaths and glanced at Wonwoo over his shoulder. “Well?”

“How do you find the time and energy to be mean in this state? I mean, look at you,” Wonwoo said. “Do you want to go home? I’ll take you home.”

“Have you not been drinking?”

“Not really, no. Seriously, I’ll drive you home. You need to rest.”

Jeonghan straightened up, regaining a bit of his previous composure, and then grabbed Wonwoo’s hand. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m wondering why you think you know what’s best for me.”

“I’m not saying I know what’s best for you. Why are you so argumentative? Anyway,” Wonwoo said, squeezing Jeonghan’s hand to change the subject, “why did you do this?” 

“Because I wanted to, quite frankly,” Jeonghan said. “When we were sitting down I was thinking about all that shit that Soonyoung said about you – you know, like, you’re handsome, and you’re considerate, and you’re quiet, and shit. It’s all true. And I was thinking my night would end on a decent note if I walked out of this place holding hands with you. Is that cool?”

That was a good enough reason for Wonwoo. They found Seulgi at the bar, wasted and overjoyed, and bid her goodnight and happy birthday. Wonwoo craned his neck and spotted Soonyoung on the other side of the bar. Soonyoung gave Wonwoo a tight-lipped smile and a small wave.

When they reached Wonwoo’s car and he attempted to pry his hand out of Jeonghan’s death grip, he felt a very distinct jolt of electricity at the fact that Jeonghan resisted, tightened his grip around Wonwoo’s hand, and refused to let him go.

Unfortunately for Wonwoo, Jeonghan’s sweetness –  the vulnerable sincerity in the way he wouldn’t let go of Wonwoo’s hand for anything in the world – was rather ephemeral. About fifteen minutes in to the car ride to Jeonghan’s apartment, the mood shifted slightly.

“You take a left. Here.”

“Are you sure?” Wonwoo asked.

“Why the fuck would I not know how to get to my own apartment?” Jeonghan shot back.

“Whoa, whoa! Testy! I’m asking because I’ve been circling around the same block for five god damn minutes, on your directions!”

“Ugh, fuck. You take a left on Broadway. And then you take a right on to First. I honestly have no idea where we are, I was just guessing. Wonwoo, my head is killing me. And I’m going to be sick again.”

“I get that,” Wonwoo said gently, “but don’t take it out on me. Why did you drink so much anyway?”

“Because, if you must know,” Jeonghan said, “I cannot fucking stand the fact that I exist. And I had a terrible week. And I hate my job, and I am notorious for using my friends’ birthdays as excuses to get exceptionally shitfaced. I’m just a pile of shit to be honest.”

“Come on…”

“Hey remember. You’ve only known me for, like, two seconds. I could honest to God be the certifiably worst person you’ve ever met in your entire life and you wouldn’t even know. ‘Cause you’re all, like, thinking about taking me home. And having lunch with me on Monday. And getting my number. And asking me out. And then taking me home… and taking me home… and taking me home. That’s all anyone thinks about, really.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo said. “So you do this a lot?”

“A lot,” Jeonghan laughed. “Ahhh… so much. It’s almost as if I can’t fucking stop! Don’t you have anything terrible that you do to fill the void? Or are you really just as perfect as Soonyoung always said you are.”

“I’m not perfect. Soonyoung knows that. Better than anyone, actually. Don’t you think it’s dangerous to talk to me under all of these assumptions you’ve built based on shit Soonyoung has told you about me? Don’t you think it’s adding some unnecessary weight to this conversation?”

“Huh,” Jeonghan said, leaning his head against the window. “Okay, okay, now take a right. Through that gate.”

Wonwoo thought of how many times he had driven by these apartments going back and forth to Soonyoung’s old apartment on the other side of town. He thought of just how close he and Jeonghan had always been to each other and their paths only converged because of some stupid anomaly in Wonwoo’s normal routine. He absentmindedly followed Jeonghan’s directions back to his building, circled around a few times in a futile search for parking, and put his car in park in a red zone.

Jeonghan tried and failed to unbuckle his seatbelt, cursing under his breath at his drunken ineptitude.

“Do you need help?” Wonwoo asked, to which Jeonghan replied with a look of disgust and a small whine.

“Don’t treat me like a baby,” he said. Wonwoo leaned over and tried to unbuckle the seatbelt for him, but he smacked Wonwoo’s hand away. “What did I just say?”

Wonwoo laughed and rubbed his thumb lightly against the stinging skin of his hand. “Sorry,” he said.

“So,” Jeonghan said at the _snap!_ of the seatbelt. He tossed his hair out of his eyes and looked at Wonwoo expectantly. “You’re staying over, right? Like, this is the part where you bring me home and I let you fuck me out of gratitude,” he said.

“No… That isn’t what’s happening here,” Wonwoo said slowly, genuinely surprised and a little upset that Jeonghan had even come to that conclusion. “I’ll stay over if you need me to, but we’re not going to do anything. Not like this.”

“Oh, okay,” Jeonghan said, almost like he was pissed off. But he had sounded pissed off before, too. There was no understanding this guy. “What are you, like, a _good person_ or something? Doesn’t that mean I just owe you double?”

“That’s, like, the opposite of what it means, Jeonghan. It specifically means that you owe me nothing. I’m sorry that you’ve clearly never had a relationship that works on those kinds of principles before, but I would like to think that you see a little more in me than someone who would treat you like that.”

“I don’t know what I see in you,” Jeonghan said. “I don’t even know you.” There was something so intentionally ugly in the tone of his voice, like he was just trying to upset Wonwoo on purpose. But Wonwoo was already learning how to play that game.

“Then I’ll give you the evening to figure that out. Goodnight, Jeonghan. I’ll see you at work on Monday.” 

Jeonghan set his jaw and opened the car door. He made a series of calculated, careful movements to not appear as drunk to Wonwoo as he actually was – didn’t exactly fool Wonwoo – and slammed the door. He waited.

Wonwoo rolled the window down. “Yes?”

“You’re full of shit, you know,” Jeonghan said. He was looking particularly pitiful and washed out underneath the streetlamp. Wonwoo wished, just for a second, that he could press pause on this moment. Keep this image of Jeonghan at his absolute worst in his mind for the next time the two of them would see each other and Jeonghan would have the upper hand just by existing. Maybe that was bad of him. Maybe Wonwoo wasn’t a good person.

Maybe Jeonghan – and Soonyoung and everyone else – had him all wrong.

“Well? Are you just going to sit there and stare at me for the rest of the fucking night?”

“God, you’re being impossible,” Wonwoo sighed, unbuckling his seatbelt and exiting the car. He wasn’t in a real parking spot and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to entertain the possibility of dealing with security just to appease Jeonghan’s petulant moodiness. But the pathetic, worn down look in Jeonghan’s eyes was a pretty convincing argument. He walked around to the passenger side and grabbed Jeonghan’s arm. “Which apartment is yours? I’m walking you there whether you want me to or not.”

Jeonghan threw a lazy finger out in a vague direction.

“Is this how you get attention? This is the Jeonghan modus operandi?” Wonwoo linked his arm with Jeonghan’s. Jeonghan leaned into him and they walked together, sloppy and out of sync, while Jeonghan squinted and read the numbers on the door.

“One-ten,” he said.

Wonwoo stopped and spun around, pulling Jeonghan clumsily behind him. They had passed one-ten about a full minute ago and Jeonghan had probably been aware of that to some degree. It was the one with the flickering porch light out front.

“Why don’t you call maintenance to fix that,” Wonwoo said.

“Good question,” Jeonghan said. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and shoved them in Wonwoo’s hand.

Wonwoo leaned down and attempted to focus his eyes on the lock. There were deep scratches all around it, like Jeonghan had spent a significant amount of time trying and failing to unlock the door after countless nights of drunken mistakes. The flickering light was making it difficult and Jeonghan’s whining was making Wonwoo antsy. He finally managed to get it, turned the key and opened the door.

“You really should go home,” Jeonghan said, making a pretty intimidating wall out of his body to prevent Wonwoo from seeing inside his apartment. “I was thinking about it. No one ever likes me anymore after they spend the night. So go home.”

“I can do that,” Wonwoo said.

Jeonghan’s brows arched and he scoffed. “Wow,” he said. Wonwoo wished he understood just how mean he sounded. “You will literally do whatever I say. What if I asked you to stay?”

“I would.”

“Whatever. Goodnight.” Jeonghan slammed the door in Wonwoo’s face before he could say anything else. He probably deserved that. Not because he had necessarily done anything wrong, but because that was the shit that happened when you were too forthright and genuine with a boy you barely knew.  

Wonwoo could hear Jeonghan’s muffled movement through the door. Coat falling on the floor. Shoes coming off. A light switch flipped on. He stayed and listened longer than he should have – convinced himself that he didn’t actually peek through the small opening in the blinds just for one last glimpse.

 

 

 

Jeonghan was folding letters, as he usually did, at 8:15. Wonwoo was picking up his prints, as he had now made a habit of doing, at 8:15.

“Morning,” Wonwoo said. He wondered where they would be today – just coworkers? A passing conversation about another grueling Monday. Small talk ended on a comma because they were bound to get reprimanded for wasting precious company time. There were other options, of course, but Wonwoo was not sure how to define them.

“Morning,” Jeonghan said. He opened the letter machine and pulled out the crumpled up sheets inside. Then he stared at it and flexed his fingers for a few seconds. He shoulders sank, just a micrometer, one sign of human emotion that Wonwoo would have missed if he hadn’t been looking so hard.   

Wonwoo opened the scanner for no reason and then closed it. He looked around the drawers of office supplies and pretended that there was something he urgently needed. All of this just to stretch out a few seconds standing in the same room with Jeonghan – sober, grouchy, but Jeonghan nonetheless.

“Jeonghan—”

“Do you know how many times this has happened to me?” Jeonghan asked. He slammed the letter machine closed. The mechanic whirring that ensued indicated it was back to normal. “Specifically with guys in this office.”

Wonwoo shrugged, focused on the feeling of the prints in his hand, still warm from the printer. He always loved that feeling. “That has nothing to do with me. In any case, now is hardly the time.”

“You’re right, huh,” Jeonghan said derisively. “Always right.”

“I’m not always right! I’m not anything you think I am. And you’re not the only person who is unhappy. You’re not the only person who gets upset, and restless, and shitfaced to deal with it all. But there is one thing you have over everyone I’ve ever met in my life and it’s that I’ve never seen someone take their bad moods out on others the way you do. Anyway, I have work to do. I can’t stand in here talking to you forever.”

“Okay,” Jeonghan said, sounding genuinely peaceful enough to convince Wonwoo that he was bowing out of the conversation gracefully. The letter machine quieted down with a low hum. “I’m sorry, Wonwoo.”

Wonwoo wanted to bite back. He wanted to fight with Jeonghan, tell him to pretend to be a little more genuine with his fake apologies, he wanted one moment to exercise the power of being ruthlessly mean to someone who was trying their hardest. And he wanted to understand what joy Jeonghan clearly derived from being that way.

But there was no joy in Jeonghan’s face. No cruelty. Just something that Wonwoo couldn’t quite read.

“I really mean it,” Wonwoo said lightly. “This is a terrible place to have a conversation like this. Let’s have a bit of decency and at least save it for the break room.”

Jeonghan laughed a little. He grabbed the stack of folded letters and tucked them under his arm. “You’re right. Lunch? Noon?”

“Sure,” Wonwoo said. He saw Jeonghan off with a small wave, returned to his desk, and wondered if blink-and-you’ll-miss-them ten minute intervals consisting of nothing more than snapshot conversations were enough time to fall in love with someone.

 

 

 

“Crackers don’t count as lunch,” Wonwoo said.

Jeonghan held one in between his lips and gave Wonwoo a look that very clearly conveyed how little he cared what Wonwoo had to say about anything. He ate the cracker in frustratingly small bites. “And what are you having?”

“I don’t know. Something Soonyoungie left for me. I forgot mine at home this morning.”

“Ah,” Jeonghan said, expression twisting itself into a slight scowl at the sound of _Soonyoungie_.

Wonwoo just smiled like he didn’t notice, but granted himself just one moment to revel in knowing that Jeonghan had such an obvious jealous streak. He opened the lunch pail and sighed. Crackers and cheese and a juice box. “I apologize. I’m no better than you.”

“You love being sanctimonious,” Jeonghan teased, chin resting in his hand and eyes focused on the muted talk show playing on the TV overhead. The closed captioning revealed something about a celebrity scandal, a messy divorce, a torrid gay love affair that was supposed to make everything that much more dramatic for whatever reason.

“You love being a brat,” Wonwoo countered. “And why do you like watching this shit so much?”

“I’m keeping up with current events.” Jeonghan scrunched up his nose at Wonwoo – cute, and almost cheerful. He was in a much better mood compared to before. “Hey. Why don’t we go out this weekend? Just us.”  

“I guess that’s fine, but why do we have to go out?”

“Well… we don’t have to go out, I guess. We… can stay in. My place? Friday?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I have to warn you,” Jeonghan said, tilting his head. “I’m terrible company under such circumstances.”

“Well… let’s be honest, that’s pretty obvious.” Wonwoo said.

Jeonghan turned his attention back to the television with a scowl. Wonwoo didn’t feel the need to urge the conversation on any forward as he enjoyed the opportunity studying the angle of Jeonghan’s profile, the way his eyes squinted whenever something particularly ridiculous happened on the screen, the way that he would sigh for seemingly no reason at all.  

The way that even in peaceful silence, the air around Jeonghan was sharp like needles, and Wonwoo still wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to risk the pain.

 

 

 

Wonwoo took a deep breath. His hand lingered just over the door to Jeonghan’s apartment. Once he knocked on that door, that was it for the night, and he wasn’t even really sure what that meant. Just that the night would be set and he was going to have to deal with the outcome for better or for worse.

He knocked with all of the courage he could muster. Jeonghan answered looking rather dour and holding a bottle of vodka.

“Getting started early, are we?” Wonwoo asked.

Jeonghan silently gestured for Wonwoo to come in. “Yeah,” he said.

Wonwoo hadn’t expected much from Jeonghan’s apartment, but the stark coldness and emptiness made him feel bad nonetheless. There was a lingering feeling of transience, minimalism so invasive it only existed as a means for a quick escape. There was a couch, a coffee table, and a bookshelf. No knick-knacks or any signs of life.

“Depressing,” Wonwoo said.

“Ohhhh,” Jeonghan said, holding his hand over his heart in mock hurt. “Your judgment wounds me.”

“That’s called an observation,” Wonwoo corrected.

“Mmmhmm. Here, hold this,” Jeonghan handed Wonwoo that bottle and retreated to the kitchen, leaving Wonwoo alone to make himself comfortable. He sat down on the couch and pulled his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through his Facebook feed. Nothing much was going on except for a change in Seulgi’s relationship status. Good for her, Wonwoo thought. She was pretty, and she was nice, and she was going to make an excellent girlfriend for some—

_In a relationship with Soonyoung Kwon._

Ah. Wonwoo locked his phone. It was fine. It was Soonyoung’s right to finally let himself move on. It was always Wonwoo’s wish for Soonyoung that he would find someone who made him as happy as he deserved to be. But that didn’t change the sting, as small as it was, and the hypothetical lifetime that flashed before Wonwoo’s eyes, moments he would never get to experience with Soonyoung simply because he opted out and never really figured out why.

Jeonghan returned a moment later with two shot glasses. Though he hadn’t quite been before, Wonwoo was all in now.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“To take a shot every time you feel inexplicably, uncontrollably sad.”

Wonwoo laughed. Jeonghan grabbed the bottle and poured a sloppy shot, vodka running from the edge of the glass and down his fingers and to his wrist, ending it with a sharp exhale at the taste, and then brought the tips of his fingers to his lips.

Wonwoo wanted to let him know a number of things in that moment. That he was ridiculous and beautiful in a way that made Wonwoo feel a little sick. That Wonwoo didn’t want to spend the night so plastered he wouldn’t be able to remember the curve of Jeonghan’s wry smile and the sight of Jeonghan’s lips against his own skin, the quiet desperation in how he went after every last drop of alcohol.

Wonwoo wanted to savor that moment, and Jeonghan knew this, and that gave the situation a power imbalance that Wonwoo didn’t appreciate. He didn’t feel the need to ask Jeonghan why he felt inexplicably and uncontrollably sad, but the idea of losing even a second of Jeonghan in any capacity made Wonwoo feel the same – so he took the bottle back and took a drink, no glass necessary.

Another shot in at the thought of Soonyoung bashfully, sweetly confessing his heartfelt feelings for Seulgi and Wonwoo could feel his cheeks flushing. He couldn’t really remember when they ended up on their backs halfway under the coffee table, scrolling through an album of Wonwoo’s childhood photos on his mother’s Facebook, but Wonwoo became harshly reacquainted with reality at the feeling Jeonghan’s leg pressed against his own.

“That’s from the spelling bee I did in the eighth grade,” Wonwoo said.

“Braces,” Jeonghan commented.

“Yeah. And glasses. The works.”

“What word did you lose on?”

“Hmm?” Wonwoo turned his head to look at Jeonghan, caught off guard by just how close they were. “How do you know I lost?”

“Clearly you lost because you aren’t holding a trophy, and why would your mom take a picture of you without your trophy at a spelling bee that you won?”

Wonwoo scoffed. He scrolled to the next picture, one with his significantly disappointed father. “Piecemeal,” he said.

“What,” Jeonghan said, “the fuck kind of word is piecemeal?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Wonwoo scrolled quickly through the remainder of his shameful spelling bee memories. “This is why I barely make over minimum wage, honestly. Because I came in fifth place in my eighth grade fuckin’ spelling bee.”

“I get that. I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid,” Jeonghan said. “Look where I am now.”

“Being bitter as fuck, perpetually drunk, and maintaining a series of manically unstable relationships with the people around you… sounds like you’re on the right track, honestly,” Wonwoo said.

Jeonghan elbowed him. “Shut up… I mean it,” he said.

“Jeonghan. We’re both young. We have so much time to get things done. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow or next month or even next year. Why do you feel like it does?”

“Probably because I don’t want to waste the best of years of my life being miserable and then only have a remotely good time when I’m too old and ugly to enjoy anything.”

That was reasonable enough for Wonwoo. He turned over on his side to face Jeonghan. Jeonghan did the same. They were almost too close – all Wonwoo needed to do was lean forward. But he wasn’t going to do that. Not for the sake of closing the gap between them just because. Not for the sake of forgetting that Soonyoung and Seulgi were probably doing the same or more.

“What do you want to do, then?” Wonwoo asked.

“Ideally, I would move to the city. I would write the next great American novel. You know, something that a lot of people like. And it would make me so much money that I could focus on what I want to write for the rest of my life.”

“What exactly is stopping you from moving to the city and doing all this shit you want to do?”

“Literally everything,” Jeonghan said, like Wonwoo was the biggest dumbass on planet earth. Or maybe Wonwoo was just feeling like the biggest dumbass on planet earth, because he was suffering through this grueling conversation instead of kissing Jeonghan, touching Jeonghan –

“You should just go. If you can manage it, you should go,” Wonwoo said.

“Huh. Would you be sad without me?”

“Maybe I would go with you.”

Jeonghan laughed – Wonwoo liked the sound of it. It was light and soft, even when Jeonghan was clearly feeling the opposite. “And if we fell apart in my characteristically dramatic fashion? What would happen then?”

“I would come back here,” Wonwoo said simply. When Jeonghan had nothing to say to that, Wonwoo continued, “I guess the difference between the two of us is that to you, everything is so dead ended. Everything is your last shot. But it’s not like that. Every day is just the prologue to tomorrow or whatever.”

Wonwoo could feel Jeonghan’s fingers creeping over his own like a spider. He blindly threw his arm out and up over the edge of the table, grabbed the bottle of vodka and pulled it underneath the table with them. He took a swig, vodka dripping down his chin from the uncomfortable angle at which Wonwoo was attempting to drink. He wiped it off with his sleeve.

“Really,” Jeonghan said.

“Really.”

“I make you sad.”

“Kind of.”

“Ha… Well. You make me sad, too.”

“I just want to tell you,” Wonwoo said, “that I spend a lot of my time regretting the fact that once upon a time I had a good thing, and I fucked it up, and I’ll never know why. And I got on Facebook earlier and I saw that Soonyoung and Seulgi are dating now.”

Jeonghan’s eyed widened slightly at this, but he remained silent.

“Point is, that’s kind of my thing. I just stay still. Comfortably. But being comfortable doesn’t necessarily mean being happy. I would rather chase after the chance of a good thing then let another one pass me by. So yeah. I would follow you to the city. Or literally anywhere. I would hang around until you didn’t want me to anymore. That’s all I can say. Make of it what you w—”

Jeonghan cut Wonwoo off with a kiss – a kiss that Wonwoo couldn’t even feel because his chapped lips were still burning from the alcohol.

Wonwoo held his fingers against his lips. “I feel like everything is happening out of order,” he said. “Or too fast. I don’t know, but… I… hmm.” He grabbed Jeonghan’s chin and looked him in the eyes. It didn’t mean much; he was mostly doing it just to do it. Jeonghan didn’t have anything to say, rather surprisingly.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime of neither of them making any type of move, Jeonghan said, “I don’t know if you were aware of this, but I don’t do anything right. I especially don’t do relationships right. So it doesn’t matter to me. I can say that there are worse places I’ve considered my feelings for someone than underneath my coffee table.”

Wonwoo laughed. He pulled Jeonghan’s chin upwards just a bit, calculated the angle of his lips and Jeonghan’s lips, and then promptly talked himself out of a sloppy, drunken kiss.

He couldn’t do that. He took in the feeling of Jeonghan’s skin against his fingertips for one second more, and then he let go.  

 

 

 

When Wonwoo woke up, he was in Jeonghan’s bed. Fully clothed, head pounding, morning light almost too much for his eyes to handle. Jeonghan was awake, sitting with his back up against the headboard and reading something on his phone.

“Man,” Wonwoo said, “what the fuck.”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan said.

“Did… we…”

“No,” Jeonghan said, rolling his eyes. “Hell no. You were all crying and shit. Like, saying you were in love with me and wanted to do everything right and this wasn’t right. Which is fine, whatever. But you asked if you could sleep in my bed with me. And I said okay.”

Wonwoo massaged his temples, pressing down so hard against his skull in a way that felt good through all the pain. “I said I was in love with you?” he asked.

“Yeah, like a thousand times,” Jeonghan snorted. He looked down at Wonwoo and smiled. He was in a good mood.

Wonwoo sat up, but it took a good minute. His limbs were aching and stiff. Never again, he told himself. He scooted closer to Jeonghan, pressing their shoulders together.

“Hey,” Jeonghan said. “I wanted to show you something. Piecemeal. P-i-e-c-e-m-e-a-l. Done, made, or accomplished piece by piece or in a fragmentary way. What a stupid word.”

“Yeah. Stupid as shit. There’s, like, a thousand different ways to convey that sentiment.” They laughed, but Wonwoo was feeling a little closer to crying from the sheer fact that Jeonghan had woken up and thought to look up the definition of the word Wonwoo had misspelled in a spelling bee when he was fourteen years old.

Wonwoo turned to Jeonghan. He looked so human it made Wonwoo’s stomach hurt. Messy hair, dark circles under his eyes more evident than ever before. Wonwoo leaned forward, pulled back, and then leaned forward again. If he had lacked the confidence to kiss Jeonghan when they were drunk out of their minds, what made him think he would be able to do it sober, in Jeonghan’s bed, the morning after a series of intimate confessions he couldn’t even remember.

Jeonghan looked at him, expression wide-eyed and sweet. Wonwoo had never seen that expression on him before. “Do you want to go get breakfast or something?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said. He took this for what it was, a piece of the nonlinear narrative that he shared with Jeonghan, of which he was trying so hard to make even an iota of sense. They would go get breakfast, they would probably hold hands, and Wonwoo would figure out where in their story that moment was supposed to fit and where it would actually end up.

And regardless of what conclusion he came to, Wonwoo promised himself as he unashamedly but innocently watched Jeonghan changing his clothes, another one of those moments that he wished with all of his might he could pause and preserve forever, that he would simply be happy that it happened to begin with.  


End file.
